WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Synopsis

Fred Rogers led a singular life. He was a puppeteer. A minister. A musician. An educator. A father, a husband, and a neighbor. Fred Rogers spent 50 years on children’s television beseeching us to love and to allow ourselves to be loved. With television as his pulpit, he helped transform the very concept of childhood. He used puppets and play to explore the most complicated issues of the day—race, disability, equality and tragedy. He spoke directly to children and they responded by forging a lifelong bond with him—by the millions. And yet today his impact is unclear. WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? explores the question of whether or not we have lived up to Fred's ideal. Are we all good neighbors?

The Filmmakers

Morgan NevilleDirector

Morgan Neville is a documentary filmmaker whose films focus on culture. His acclaimed film 20 Feet from Stardom won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary as well as a Grammy Award for Best Music Film in 2015. His documentary, Best of Enemies was shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Award. Neville has been nominated for three additional Grammys for: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied and Johnny Cash’s America and he won an Emmy Award for his film Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues. Neville’s non-music films include The Cool School and Beauty Is Embarrassing. Recent projects include Chelsea Does, a four-part documentary series and Keith Richards: Under the Influence. His latest film, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, was recently released by The Orchard and HBO and has become one of the highest grossing documentaries of 2016.

Caryn CapotostoProducer

An Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, Caryn is Head of Productions at Tremolo Productions in Los Angeles. She was Associate Producer on the Academy Award and Grammy-winning documentary, 20 Feet From Stardom (2013) and Co-Producer on Best of Enemies which received a 2016 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary. Other projects include the documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design and Chelsea Does, both for Netflix (Supervising Producer for Tremolo, 2016). Her feature docs include The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble (Associate Producer, 2015), Filmage: The Story of Descendents / ALL (Co-Producer, 2014), and the Rolling Stones documentary, Crossfire Hurricane (HBO, 2012). Her current projects include Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Producer, 2018), a feature documentary on the iconic children’s host, Fred Rogers, Afghan Cycles (2018), a feature doc about gender equality and women’s rights in Afghanistan, and Om Supreme: The Alice Coltrane Story.

Nicholas MaProducer

Nicholas Ma is a freelance consultant and filmmaker from New York City. Focused on social impact projects, especially through the arts, he regularly consults for major artistic figures and organizations as well as public sector institutions seeking to drive change. He left McKinsey & Company in 2014 as an Associate Partner, where he led large-scale transformations of public sector entities, from national governments to local school districts, and multinational corporations. A graduate of Harvard College, he previously worked in Washington, D.C. for then-Senator John Kerry, handling his global economic portfolio on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.